Dungeons or questing? What’s the best way to level in WoW Classic Season of Discovery (SoD)

With the launch of a new phase of WoW Classic’s Season of Discovery, players once again can start gaining experience and level up their characters. The second phase of WoW SoD allows players to finally progress past level 25 up to a new max level of 40.

This time around, the leveling experience isn’t as fresh as it was in phase one, and new factors are entering the playing field. Most notably, the addition of dungeons during this phase’s level band will play a role in the way you level up right from the very beginning of the second phase.

With a plethora of content out in the open world as well as many mid-game dungeons to level through, you have a choice: Should you spend your time grinding dungeons for experience or is it better to level in the open world during this next phase of WoW SoD? 

Is running dungeons more effective than questing in WoW SoD?

Running dungeons in WoW Season of Discovery might seem very intriguing, but in our opinion, it doesn’t have the same value that it does in other versions of WoW, at least in the context of leveling. Confining yourself to a dungeon and running it over and over again just isn’t as effective as going out into the world, defeating mobs, and completing relevant quests at a much more consistent pace.

As has been the case with WoW Classic since its launch, the most effective way to use dungeons in Season of Discovery is to gather up all the quests for one specific dungeon before entering it and completing all those quests during your initial run. If you end up missing parts of an objective or unintentionally skip a quest during your first run-through of a dungeon, only then should you run the dungeon a second time. Consistently running dungeons for raw experience not only gets really boring but just isn’t as effective as completing quest lines that are rich with similar amounts of mobs and gear. 

Season of Discovery’s greatest secrets are found in the open world. While there’s definitely gear and a decent chunk of experience inside dungeons, all of the secrets, runes, and main reasons why you should be playing SoD are going to be found in Azeroth’s open zones—not inside of its dungeons. We recommend holding off on dungeons until you have either all of the quests or are in desperate need of gear once you hit the max level of a particular level band during one of SoD’s phases.